Next Week’s Reading & Reflection

Fight // Flight // Freeze

What happens to us when we experience danger and our guards go up?

Our bodies have an autonomic response and our nervous systems decide to Fight, Flight or Freeze. Our brain is flooded with hormones and gets ready to respond to danger.

Let’s look at each of the 3 responses:

Fight and flight are two sides of the same coin, all based on the perceived threat and how you’ll most likely survive. Your heart rate gets faster and gets more oxygen to your major muscles. Your pain perception drops, your hearing sharpens…. And your nacho libre outfit appears.  

• A fight example: when our 3-year-old threw his dinner plate upside down on the floor because he was told he had to eat said dinner. 

• A flight example: When our 3-year-old outran me in the preschool parking lot, running from the building, at the beginning of the school year. 

Freezing is fight-or-flight on hold, where you further prepare to protect yourself. It’s also called attentive immobility. It involves similar physiological changes, but instead, you stay completely still and get ready for the next move. It’s literally like time slows down while you’re visualizing your killer karate chop. 

• A freeze example: This is what happened to me when, without warning, my cranky baby squeezed a baby food pouch all over the person next to us on the airplane. There’s no playbook for that! FREEZE. 

Fight-flight-freeze can keep us safe, or it can rev up our bodies and keep us from experiencing an emotion we need to encounter. It is NOT a conscious decision, but rather it’s an automatic reaction when we fear danger. That means we can’t always keep it from happening, but we can recognize and regain control of our bodies, triggering a relaxation response and turning off FFF. 

To bypass the FFF alarm altogether, we have the ability to tell our bodies we are safe. Here are two great ways that have been clinically tested:

1. Deep breaths (here is one effective method)

2. Tapping (here is a great explanation)

(Practice ANY of your favorite decompression exercises- and use what feels best to YOUR body!)

We can help our brains and bodies learn to return to a calm state more effectively after Flight, Fight, or Freeze by practicing great mental health practices that build resiliency. Writing down your thoughts and feelings, laughing whenever possible, exercising, detoxing regularly through a healthy diet of lots of fruits and veggies, sauna, sweating, medication, worship, practicing gratitude, and having fun! (We love what Dr. Caroline Leaf has to say on the matter)

When we don’t bypass the FFF alarm, it takes 20-60 minutes to come down from the cortisol hit we just experienced. Normally this is because we didn’t expel the cortisol by actually fighting or flighting. So as we feel shaken up, we (sometimes with intentionality and consciousness, most times unintentionally and subconsciously) do anything to feel better. We use behaviors or substances to feel normal again. We ALL do this because we all are trying to get back to normal! 

After a wave of adrenaline from a FFF response is when we are very vulnerable to cope poorly. It’s important to be mindful then of positive ways to reset and calm ourselves back down.

Self-Reflection:

1. Which is your go-to in moments of stress: Fight, flight, or freeze?
   
   

2. How has this played out recently? What stressed you, and how exactly did you fight, flight or freeze? (Fight is any combative response, flight is any quick escape, and freeze is a shut- down response)
   
   

3. As a child, which was your first response, fight, flight, or freeze? What factors contributed to that?
   
   

4. What are any positive ways you’ve learned to calm yourself after waves of stress? What do you subconsciously do to feel better? 

Isolation Spirals: What our destructive coping mechanisms do to us

Fight-Flight-Freeze is the natural reaction our bodies have to fear and stress. It’s meant to be a temporary solution to a real momentary problem.

But the problem isn’t just those external fears and dangers. Life is hard. Life hurts - deeply. So we’ve all learned shortcuts to the same kind of temporary painkilling that fight-flight-freeze does naturally. We’ve all learned how to seek momentary relief to avoid our pain and the bigger issues behind it. And those momentary painkillers have unintended long-term effects. They end up creating distance from the people that we need to be close to - the people that we need to help us heal. 

Our coping mechanisms are unconscious protection from others getting to our vulnerable place - the place where we can be wounded. They push us away from people because people are the ones who could hurt us, and keep us from relying on God who wants to carry us through our pain and fear. 

The biggest problem with any coping mechanism isn’t the behavior or substance itself: it’s the ISOLATION that it causes. 

Let’s look at Elsa for a moment. Yep, Disney’s Elsa of Arendelle.

(If you haven’t seen Frozen, well, we are impressed. We’ve been singing it in our home for 4 years.) 

Elsa has the power to make ice and snow, and as a young girl her powers get out of hand and she hurts her sister. Out of fear, her father asks her to hide away, and to push down all the emotions that could ignite her power so she doesn’t hurt anyone. She grows up pushing her emotions down and locking out her sister and the world, afraid she’ll hurt someone. It’s as if she’s received the message that if she’s fully herself, she won’t be fully loved. “Don’t let them in, don’t let them see, be the good girl you always have to be!” Isn’t that our biggest fear?

So what happens in this outstanding drama? Well, by hiding away from relationships, her fear grows, making her powers explode! She puts Arendelle into a never-ending winter! Because what we stuff always comes to the surface in one way or another, sometimes exploding into icy blasts all around us! 

Elsa runs off to the mountains to be alone, where it is “safe” to let her powers loose without hurting anyone! She feels empowered to be herself, or to feel normal again, so long as no one is around.  “Let it go, let it go! Can’t hold it back anymore…” She becomes queen of an ice castle… “in this kingdom of isolation, it looks like I’m the queen.”

Unfortunately, as soon as her sister Anna shows up to give her the very thing she’s hoped for “I’m not scared of you Elsa, we can do this together!” her fear of getting hurt and of hurting her sister pushes her sister away! She believes that she can only be herself if she is alone! She yells at Anna to leave before she gets hurt and bam! An Icey blast strikes her sister’s heart and a giant Ice monster chases Anna and friends OFF a cliff. 

What made her feel normal- letting her powers loose- now pushes her sister away! What made her feel in control- letting her powers loose- now hurts the very person she loves most! 

The spiral is clear, Elsa desperately wants to be loved for who she is, but is so scared of intimacy that she mortally wounds the person who is capable of loving her! And she will never learn to control her powers until she learns to let Anna in. 

How perfect is that? Truly, it’s brilliant writing, not only because parents everywhere have had Frozen music stuck in their heads for 9 years, but because it’s a great retelling of the human experience. We run from intimacy because of past wounds or fear of getting hurt, and end up in our own kingdoms of ICEolation, where we inadvertently wound others AND ourselves by keeping others at a distance! We do it to feel momentarily safe, but it only spirals us into further isolation.

When Elsa learns to trust Anna at the end of the movie, Elsa regains control of her powers and trust, and summer, are restored in all of Arendelle.

Because although we say the cold doesn’t bother us, no one wants to be trapped in their own kingdoms of isolation. 

So, let’s look at isolation spirals, things that give us something in the short term at the cost of relationship in the long term.

They are many, so stop and focus on the ones you identify most with, thinking about what your ice palace looks like and how you use it to chase others away.

For each one we ask the same questions: 

1. What does this behavior do for me? How does it make me feel momentarily safe or stable? 
   
   

2. How exactly does this isolate me? What effect does this have on my relationships or my perception of how others might think of me?
   
   

3. What would breaking the spiral look like? What is the one courageous step that could break my isolation? 

Perfectionism and Legalism

Perfectionism seems like a personal issue, right? An internal struggle against anxiety, insecurity, or fear that I’m not good enough for God or even for my own standards. 

But right there, we start to see a deeper relational issue: perfectionism is a desperate battle for acceptance. And acceptance comes from others. 

The problem behind perfectionism and legalism is actually judgments. 

Judgments are an assumption about your character, based on your behavior. They don’t say you did something bad; they say you are something bad. Judgments are one of the most powerful unconscious things that we avoid - they are a fast track to lasting heart wounds. We’ve all been judged at some point in our lives, and our hearts don’t let us forget those moments. 

One protective response to that unconscious fear of judgment is to never be too vulnerable in certain areas. Never give someone evidence that might lead to an assumption about who I really am. 

Words like these wound us to the core: 

• if you tried a bit harder… 

• if you weren’t such a screw-up… 

• if you didn’t have that long, dark past…

• if you REALLY loved the people in your life that you’re hurting… 

Judgments lead to instant relational barriers. And PAST judgments leave us with corrupted beliefs about who we are, how God sees us, and how safe it is to trust other people. 

But that wall of perfectionism or religious legalism is a TOUGH facade to keep up - and it’s all based on this insecure fear. So anxious energy - which is real energy in the body - is produced all the time to keep the shield powered up. And as damaging as the energy is… it feels good and helpful moment. It helps us avoid the fear of judgment and the pain of shallow relationships. 

If no one knows my struggles, then no one knows me.

In his fantastic book The Cure, John Lynch says “When I wear a mask, only the mask receives love.” Legalism creates distance between me and God - if I don’t let Him behind the mask, I don’t get the grace I need. And perfectionism creates distance between me and others - if I don’t show them what’s really going on, then I don’t get the support I need. 

Unfortunately, the next stop on the spiral is where it gets rough. 

My personal legalism or perfectionism comes naturally paired with a judgmental attitude toward others. There is an intense connection between my fear of judgment and how I judge others. 

Listen to Jesus talk about this in Matthew 7:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?” 

He isn’t just posing an interesting idea… he’s asking a question! And we need to answer it! 

WHY do we do it? WHY do we turn our attention to sawdust in someone else’s eye? Notice, he said LOOK and not TAKE OUT… he knows we’re not doing it to be helpful. If we were helpful… we’d take it out and provide our friend some relief from a perpetually itchy eye!

The reality is that I’m using the dust in your eye to block my view of the plank in mine. 

My plank scares me. But your sawdust relieves me of that fear for a moment. It diverts my attention away from my inadequacy and toward yours. 

And right BEFORE that statement, Jesus describes how this destroys our relationships and continues the spiral: 

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

And this is not a fear-mongering statement about God raining down judgment on my head because I judged someone else. God is not petty like that. 

But we humans ARE. And we’re defensive. 

I throw my judgment at you, you throw it back on me, and we continue “protecting ourselves” by further isolating from each each other so we never have to face the reality of our fears. The spiral continues, until someone decides to break out. 

Anger and Defensiveness

Anger is often a swift spontaneous reaction that keeps you from feeling the emotion at hand (fear, shame, embarrassment, loneliness, etc.). The limbic system is protecting you from the emotion itself. (This is why we will always argue that anger is a secondary emotion, not the primary one).

Anger is the essence of the FIGHT reaction from the limbic system - it’s like its primary tool. So when you allow yourself to stay angry or act out your anger, you continue dumping adrenaline and cortisol into your body, keep your heart beating fast, and keep killing pain. 

Have you ever noticed how you can’t really feel wrong and angry at the same time? Well, that’s anger doing its job. 

But what does anger do TO us? It effectively isolates us because anger makes people afraid of us. Others can’t get too close to see the fear or the shame or the vulnerability that we experience underneath. It protects us by isolating us.

Codependency and Control Issues

Codependency is an enmeshment problem where the lines between you and I are blurred, and therefore, I’m only OK if you’re OK. The boundaries between you and I are lacking - my state of mind or wellbeing is dependent on yours.

It’s way more prevalent than we realize and isn’t reserved for people who have family members who struggle with addiction or personality disorders, although it’s hugely prevalent in those cases, it can happen in many types of relationships. Spouses, parent-child, friends, etc. 

Codependency, or “I’m not ok unless you are ok”, creates a need to control others’ thoughts, feeling, behaviors. And what’s it doing FOR us? 

It’s an attempt to get rid of someone else’s discomfort or pain so that I don’t have to deal with it either. Why? Because your pain triggers my pain: it possibly makes me feel like a failure, or causes me fear that our relationship is at stake, or a million other possible things. Rescuing you away from your pain takes away mine. 

There is SO much more to say about codependency and control, and we can’t say it all here: but here is a clear and succinct description of the common cycle of codependent relationships

When we try to control someone else or manage their emotions, we end up protecting them from things they didn’t ask us to protect them from, and that’s actually controlling them. The control pushes them to either rebel and push you away, or they acquiesce and end up resenting you. Either way, intimacy dissipates, and isolation ensues. 

Screens, Shows, & Social Media

Alright, blah blah blah… we all know we’re screen-addicted. Not shocking news. But just for fun… let’s throw my favorite stat out there: 

In 2020, viewers spent more than 57 billion minutes watching “The Office” on Netflix.

Dang. 

But wasted time and burnt-out brain cells are NOT the biggest problems with our screen addictions. Isolation is.

Shows are a remote and safe way to feed off of others’ relationships and allow us to be distracted from our own real needs. They make us feel relationally connected, but give us none of the real benefits. 

Especially when we watch things together with a spouse or a friend - we had a shared experience, which is good. But often, we’re relationally exhausted because of the intensity of what we just watched. And that means we have nothing left for the actual person we just shared the experience with! 

With social media, we can even feel artificially connected to people, when really, we're just being entertained by other people’s lives and relationships through a medium that was literally created to keep you addicted! 

But social media feels like it’s better than just passive electronics, right? Because at least there are some real people and real friends there! 

Maybe! Or not...Because between 70-93% of what we communicate is nonverbal. And so when our relationships survive primarily on text or social media, we might be only getting a mere 7% of the content. (https://youth-time.eu/to-talk-or-not-to-talk-that-is-the-question-at-least-70-percent-of-communication-is-non-verbal/)

(unless you’re awesome 😎 and use emojis 😜 like your relationships 🥳 depend on it 😳…)

Such limited content can’t light up the joy center in your brain because your unconscious brain has no idea if someone is actually glad to see you or not.

Because all in all, social media is not leaving us room for meaningful relationships with people, it just gives us hits of neurochemicals that make us feel just normal enough to keep moving forward. 

In high school I literally walked around with my mom’s laptop playing Friends, the show. Now… I realize that’s because I didn’t have any friends. At least, not any deep and real friendships with people who knew me and loved me like I needed. 

So how does all this lead to isolation? Well, of course, they steal our time and our energy, leaving us less room for the people in our lives. 

But it’s worse than that.

Our brains THRIVE on something called mimicry. You’ve probably heard of mirror neurons - it’s all part of the same circuitry in the brain. 

The main point is this: we unconsciously expect that people will react and look like what we’ve repeatedly seen. 

So when your thinking brain starts to shut down in moments of stress, exhaustion, fear, or pain, your unconscious mind quickly decides how to react based off of the most common images in your memory. It favors the common responses, not the wisest ones. 

And guess what? That part of our brain doesn’t deal in logic and language. It deals in pictures and emotions. 

What you’ve SEEN determines much of what you BELIEVE - and therefore what you’ll DO. 

So think about the pictures that we’ve uploaded into our hard drives from shows and social media, and what they’ve taught us: 

• it only takes 30 seconds or so to resolve conflict, as long as you say something poetic and quippy

• sex begins after one smooth line and a flash of bedroom eyes (forget about all the baggage from the rest of the episode!)

• who wastes time on sitting down to eat right, going to bed early, working out, going on slow walks, playing with their kids on the floor, or grocery shopping? the cool people are all too busy living their “best lives” and enjoying every moment of every day. 

• “bored” is the enemy - everything is supposed to be important and epic and dramatic all the time 

• we can even start to expect that others will treat us like the protagonist of the story (this even has a name! It’s called egocentric bias)

Or some other sinister ways this plays out… we expect that someone SHOULD be able to express all the nuance necessary for a loaded political or controversial topic in their social media post, and that the fact that they DIDN’T accurately express that nuance means they’re too far gone to be close to. 

Or maybe, although we “know” better, our unconscious minds expect that other people’s highlight reels are their real lives. It starts to subtly create distance between us if I believe that’s your reality, because it’s NOT AT ALL like mine.

Whether it’s the time we’ve lost, the comparison that haunts us, or the unrealistic expectations we’ve learned, unchecked shows and social media quickly become isolation spirals. 

I expect something. 
My expectation isn’t met. 
I’m hurt. 
I cope with more shows and social becuase help me escape my pain or discomfort or fear that my unconscious mind is trying to process. 
My expectations remain high.
My expectations are even further from reality.

And on it goes, further down the isolation spiral. 

Procrastination

Often the things with the highest importance hold the least amount of urgency, right? The things we need to do MOST we put off! I want to start exercising or eating right, but that’s just unrealistic right now… it’s the holiday season! 

And because we put the weighty and important thing in the future, the present feels better. Limbically... I have a sense of peace now where I had anxiety a minute ago. It’s not real or logical… but you get that full-body sense of short-term relief that obviously doesn’t last us very long. 

And it goes a step further too because of the cycle that procrastination sets into motion -Procrastination awakens the Panic Monster…

So if I procrastinate now, the Panic Monster helps me get stuff done later - because anxiety is ENERGY, so don’t you dare take away my procrastination, because that’s the first step in getting all this stuff done!

We can see this play out in our neurochemicals. 

Procrastination always results in a crisis of sorts. And the right amount of crisis gets you a little bit high. You get a big surge of adrenaline, kickstart your dopamine, clear out the background noise, and power through something like it’s no problem. Your motivator is FULLY activated. 

Problem is, when we do this over and over again we burn out our adrenal glands and end up with adrenal fatigue. Completely worn out and unable to muster up more adrenaline, we often then need medical intervention and a slew of vitamins to recover. Oh, and we feel exhausted and unable to use our adrenaline when we really need it. 

All the while, we have nothing left for the relationships in our lives that require our engagement. AND, we develop this tendency to be unreliable - so people can’t count on us for things anymore. Procrastination distances me from people because they don’t want to work alongside someone who brings unnecessary stress into their lives.

Depression and Anxiety

When we experience despondency and dejection, and have little motivation or energy for life. It becomes a struggle to enjoy anything or do anything. Clinical depression is highly complex - the brain becomes so broken down that it stops functioning correctly. 

But the pathway of depression is essentially a breakdown of hope. When motivation and ability to progress, change, feel better, do better, have friends, etc. go away, the brain spirals quickly. Instead of hoping and being crushed, the limbic system protects by going into basic survival mode - don’t hope, don’t get hurt.. 

The surprising companion to depression is anxiety. Anxiety is nervous energy, and its source is the nervous energy that it takes to squash dangerous emotions. Hilary Jacobs Hendel with the National Alliance on Mental Illnessd escribes anxiety this way: 

“Anxiety is a reaction to our emotions versus danger in the environment. Anxiety is a stop-reaction to the impulses that fear and other core emotions create inside the body. For example, fear mobilizes energy for movement and anxiety pushes it back down.” (reference)

So what we’re getting FROM depression, in a really sad way, is sometimes the cheap fuel of anxiety. Nervous energy is better than nothing, AND we don’t have to engage with the real fear of actual depression. 

This spiral often lands us in a place where we’d rather be alone. Or perhaps the people who’ve tried to help, but come up empty, feel helpless and stay away. 

Workaholism and Busyness

Another way we numb is to just never stop moving or achieving - or to proactively fill our days so full we “can’t” stop. Working all the time, or being so busy that we are uninterruptible, leaves no room for meaningful interaction with others. That workaholism can give us an inflated sense of importance, necessity, or purpose. Or it could just shield us from the negative thoughts or emotions that threaten to bubble up to the surface if they’re even given a chance. 

The big problem, of course, is that relationships take time. They are inherently UN-productive.  So our packed schedules and to-do lists increase our isolation. 

Political/Religious Extremism / Ideological Absolutes

Even when you win an ideological argument… you usually lose the relationship. In December 2016, a poll of 6000 people found that 16% of them had stopped talking to a friend or family member as a direct result of the election. And 22% of Millennials had ended a romantic relationship because of political strife. 

Being sold out to an ideology can make me FEEL connected to a tribe of like-minded people that GET me. This kind of extremism secures my place in the pack. Yes, we may believe the information or the policy… but it’s the thought of being severed from the tribe that I identify with that poses too high a cost - even if I have to burn a real relationship. 

The hotter this topic gets, the more we attach politics to morals and character and identity, the more easily it’ll burn a relationship or keep us from entering into one, just because it feels easier to hold onto our beliefs than be in a REAL relationship where we have to be vulnerable and experience cognitive dissonance and try to make sense of someone else’s complex story and beliefs. 

We are entitled and encouraged to have our own deeply-held beliefs. But how does this tie to limbic defense systems? We feel like we are connected to our political party or our group, and feel like someone is going to bat for us (a political or religious leader) but we aren’t addressing our real issues and vulnerable burdens that led us to these beliefs in the first place. We aren’t honestly acknowledging the fear or discomfort that lies underneath them. 

And we aren't doing it with people who see us, love us, challenge us, or walk alongside us. Real love requires ambiguity: a willingness to take in new information, believing that we are better when we take in and assimilate new information from people that matter to us.

Extremism only ends up isolating us. 

Pornography and Sexual Fantasy

Sex was designed to be a relational amplifier. It’s the physical expression of the deepest commitment you can make to someone in marriage. But it can’t create commitment and full intimacy: it only expresses it. Problem is… our brain chemicals don’t know the difference in the moment. Oxytocin is a neurotransmitter (brain chemical) and a hormone (body chemical) that’s often called the “love hormone”. We’re pretty sure its natural and healthy production promotes things like maternal care, bonding between couples, social memory, and trust.

Here’s the issue. Sexual behavior is one way to kickstart the production of oxytocin - and also endorphins - in the body. And when that sexual behavior is connected to a screen or a fantasy, it’s partnerless. But the brain likes it - it was a simple, predictable reward. So it creates a pathway to get there faster next time to get those endorphins - especially when the pathway includes a trigger that involved any kind of pain or discomfort. That’s the limbic holy grail: kill pain with pleasure. 

And that oxytocin promotes bonding… to whatever you were bonding with. So the brain learns that the reliable, predictable, safe way to engage with sex is the partnerless way - because when you add a partner that you’re vulnerable with, and in a committed and complex marriage with… things can and will go wrong. You can and will get hurt. 

But not when you remove the complex part. So the pathways are redirected away from your partner and toward the images or fantasies, leading to less desire and more toxic shame, which is an isolation spiral. 

Independence 

We are not talking about a healthy-sense-of-self-with-good-boundaries kind of independence. We are talking about the choice to not ask for help - the destructive cultural expectation that our country worships… 
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Pull YOURSELF together! Don’t be a drain on society…   

But really, this “value” often originates in us individually with a fear of relying on others, often because someone let us down when we relied on them in the past. So we justify our isolation with a positive cultural spin. Independence is a way of protecting ourselves from expressing our needs, but then it also continues the pattern of doing things on our own without relying on someone and having them rely on you too. It amplifies isolation. 

Obsessions 

Sports, hobbies, gaming, gambling, shopping, Amazon… you can put almost anything you’d like in this category… because the issue is the obsession itself - not the thing we’re obsessing over. Obsessions are another way that we try to cover up the pain of our empty hearts. They give us little hijacked hits of neurochemicals that distract and pacify us - but they don’t last. 

But they’re all-consuming - they steal all our time. They aren’t inherently wrong, but they have a huge opportunity cost - if I’m consumed by these obsessions, I become less and less available or focused on my relationships. My attention is a zero-sum proposition. If it goes one place, it can’t go another. Obsessions eat away our attention and further isolate us in the long run. 

Substances

Manipulating our state of mind in an intentional, costly way, turning myself into someone else for a time so I don’t have to deal with my current state of mind or subject anyone else to it. And although we’d normally put alcohol, illicit drugs, marijuana, etc. on this list… our modern world has found many creative ways to manipulate our state of mind in a shockingly similar way. 

Sugar and social media, for example, are both legal and a part of our everyday lives. And both light up the dopamine pathways and reward center of the brain in essentially the same way that cocaine does. In animals, sugar seems to be more addictive than cocaine. Substances fast-track the neurochemical wall between ourselves and others. They’re doing the same things that these other isolating behaviors are - they just often work a lot faster and have a higher physical cost attached. 

Self-Reflection:

5. Which two isolation spirals do you identify with the most? 

6. When do you notice yourself doing those top 2?

7. Write out your answers to each of the three questions for each of your top 2 isolation spirals.

• What does this behavior do for me? How does it make me feel momentarily safe or stable? 

• How exactly does this isolate me? What effect does this have on my relationships or my perception of how others might think of me?

• What would breaking the spiral look like? What is the one courageous step that could proactively break my isolation? (remember, the goal is to break the ISOLATION - not just stop the behavior)

This Week’s Risk

Take at least one of the two “courageous steps” you listed above. This doesn’t mean stopping the behavior in advance, managing it better as it’s happening, or even repenting and apologizing for ways you’ve pushed others away while spiraling. This is about a proactive, intentional decision to move toward the vulnerability and connection that your spiral would naturally isolate you from.